The Times They Are A-Changing

By William McGurn
Tuesday, September 16, 2008

If the editors of the New York Times changed the paper's line on Iraq and no one called them on it, would it make a noise? Like the proverbial tree falling in an empty forest?

Something of the kind seems to have happened to the Times use of "civil war" to describe the conflict in Iraq. In the fall of 2006, the Times began insisting Iraq was in a civil war. And in the year that followed, the paper's editorials routinely castigated George W. Bush for refusing to acknowledge it.

Here's a small sample:

Nov. 29, 2006: "At this point, it's hard to tell who is more out of touch: President Bush, who continues to insist that Iraq has not descended into civil war, or Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki . . ."

Jan. 11, 2007 (the day after the president announced the surge): "The nation needs an eyes-wide-open recognition that the only goal left is to get the U.S. military out of this civil war in a way that could minimize the slaughter of Iraqis and reduce the chances that the chaos Mr. Bush unleashed will engulf Iraq's neighbors."

March 27, 2007: "As disjointed as the Democrats have been, their approach makes far more sense than Mr. Bush's denial of Iraq's civil war . . ."

July 8, 2007: "One of Mr. Bush's arguments against withdrawal is that it would lead to civil war. The war is raging, right now, and it may take years to burn out."

Oct. 23, 2007: "If [the Bush administration] doesn't now move quickly [on Turkey's threat to cross the border to attack Kurdish rebels], Iraq's disastrous civil war could spiral into an even bigger disaster -- a regional war."

And these are only a smattering of what by my count are at least 16 editorials from November 2006 to November 2007 all unequivocally asserting an Iraqi civil war.

As someone who was in Mr. Bush's speechwriting shop at the time, I remember the horrible stories coming out of Iraq -- Sunni men kidnapped and killed by Shia death squads; Shia innocents murdered by Sunnis; Kurds being driven from their homes, and so on. The violence was real, it reflected religious divisions, and on the face of it, civil war was a reasonable description.

So why did the president resist the characterization? The answer is that he resisted using "civil war" for the same reason the Times likely embraced it: It was a loaded term.

If the conflict in Iraq was really a civil war, the implication was, first, that the United States had no place being there; second, that it was hopeless. That's one reason at least five of the editorials that used the words "civil war" also used the word "unending" or "unwinnable." If you find yourself in the middle of a civil war that is unwinnable, logic allows for only one conclusion: Pull out.

This, in fact, is the same logic that MoveOn.org invoked in the ad the Times infamously ran the day Gen. David Petraeus testified before Congress. Remove the inflammatory "General Betray Us" language, and the MoveOn argument was pretty much what the Times had been saying: The U.S. was in the middle of an "unwinnable religious civil war," and our leaders were in denial.

MoveOn.org and the Times, of course, weren't alone. In what Keith Olbermann described as a "Walter Cronkite moment," NBC News in November 2006 also branded Iraq a civil war. On air later that same evening, NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell cited experts who were saying that calling the conflict a civil war "could further erode public support for keeping U.S. troops in Iraq."

Yet now NBC too has stopped using civil war. Which earlier this year prompted Ed Gillespie, a senior White House staffer, to send a letter to NBC News President Steve Capus. "Is it still NBC News's carefully deliberated opinion that Iraq is in the midst of a civil war?" Mr. Gillespie asked. "If not, will the network publicly declare that the civil war has ended, or that it was wrong to declare it in the first place?"

Good question, and one worth asking the Times. The fact is, though some of its columnists call Iraq a civil war, the Times hasn't run an editorial saying so since last November. Could that editorial silence be the Gray Lady's way of admitting a mistake? If I were the president, I think I'd take that as a "yes."